Steinberg Cubase SE 3 Getting Started Manual

CUBASE SETutorial 1: Recording and playing back audio 8 – 91
Creating a new project
Before you can start recording, you need a working environment – a 
project:
1.Pull down the File menu and select “New Project”.
A dialog appears, listing a number of project templates for various purposes.
2.Make sure the “Empty” item in the list is selected and click OK.
A file dialog appears, allowing you to specify a location for the project folder. This will 
contain all files related to the project. 
3.Navigate to...

CUBASE SE8 – 92 Tutorial 1: Recording and playing back audio
The next step is to create an audio track to record on:
4.Pull down the Project menu and select “Add Track”.
A submenu appears, listing the various types of tracks available in Cubase SE.
5.Select “Audio”.
In the dialog that appears you can select whether the track should be mono or stereo.
6.In this example, set the track to stereo by selecting Stereo from the 
pop-up menu and clicking “OK”.
An empty audio track appears in the Project window.    

CUBASE SETutorial 1: Recording and playing back audio 8 – 93
Preparing to record
Before you can start recording, there are some preparations to make:
Setting up input and output busses
When you record in Cubase SE, the signal passes from the inputs on 
your audio hardware to an input bus in the program. This is where you 
check levels and adjust the sound to be recorded. From the input bus 
the signal is written to an audio file on your hard disk, and sent to the 
track’s channel in the mixer for...

CUBASE SE8 – 94 Tutorial 1: Recording and playing back audio
2.Select the “Inputs” tab by clicking on it.
By default, there is a stereo bus present – if there wasn’t you could easily add one by 
clicking the Add Bus button.
3.Click the “+” button to the left so that the individual inputs in the bus 
are shown.
The Device Port column shows the physical inputs on your audio hardware that are 
used by the bus.
4.Click in the Device Port column for the “Left” channel.
A pop-up menu appears, listing all...

CUBASE SETutorial 1: Recording and playing back audio 8 – 95
•Right now the mixer should contain one stereo audio channel and one 
output bus – just like the picture above. 
If not, check the Hide buttons to the left. If any of these is lit (orange), click on it so that 
it goes grey.
When this button is lit, the output busses are hidden.
Leave the Mixer window open for now.
Checking the input level
When you record digitally, it’s important to set the input level correctly. 
Above all, you don’t want the...

CUBASE SE8 – 96 Tutorial 1: Recording and playing back audio
3.Play the audio source that you want to record and check the level 
meter for the channel.
4.Adjust the output level of your audio source so that the meters go rea-
sonably high without reaching 0.0 dB.
Check the numerical peak level indicator below the meter in the bus channel strip. To 
reset the peak level indicator, click on it.
• You must adjust the output level of the audio source – you cannot use 
the faders in Cubase SE to adjust the...

CUBASE SETutorial 1: Recording and playing back audio 8 – 97
3.The Transport panel contains a lot of options that affect how record-
ing is done – in this example we want most of them to be turned off. 
Check that the following buttons are off (grey or unlit):
4.Click in the ruler (the time scale area above the track in the Project 
window), at the position where you want to start recording.
When you click, the project cursor (the black vertical line) is automatically moved to 
the click position. In our...

CUBASE SE8 – 98 Tutorial 1: Recording and playing back audio
Setting up monitoring
When you are monitoring through Cubase SE, you can choose to ac-
tivate monitoring manually or automatically, in several different ways. In 
this example we choose the “Tapemachine Style” monitoring, in which 
the input signal is automatically monitored in Stop mode and during 
recording – but not during playback. This is convenient since it allows 
you to play back and listen to your recording without having to turn off...

CUBASE SETutorial 1: Recording and playing back audio 8 – 99
Recording
1.Start recording by clicking the Record button on the Transport panel.
The project cursor will start moving.
2.Play your instrument, etc.
During recording, a rectangle with an audio waveform will appear, covering the recorded 
area. This is the recorded audio event.
3.When you are done, click the Stop button on the Transport panel.
Recording stops and you can see the resulting audio event on the track.
4.If you are done recording,...

CUBASE SE8 – 100 Tutorial 1: Recording and playing back audio
Recording more events
At this point, you may want to continue recording audio, on the same 
track or on a new track.
Recording more on the same track
To record more audio on the same track, move the project cursor to a 
new start position and proceed as when you recorded the first time.
It is possible to record audio events that overlap each other, but only the 
visible events (the events at the top) will be heard when you play back.
Recording...